Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole mind, your whole soul and your whole strength. Seems to me that defining what that means in practical terms, and how the commandment is kept in one's daily affairs would be of primary importance.
This is primarily a theoretical question, so I am asking for responses about what you consider proper obedience to this commandment to look like, but if you wish to answer on a more personal level and describe how you best fulfill this commandment on a daily basis in your own personal life, that's good too.
Blessings in Christ to all who respond.
HiH
The only way that I know how to answer the OP is on a very personal level.
I would say that loving Jesus has been like marriage, which involves a love and commitment like no other on earth. When I first found Jesus, or He found me, I fell so much in love with Him, I couldn't get to sleep at night for thinking about Him. I wanted to be with Him, and I hung on His every word as I read the Gospel of Matthew time after time. Most of all, I was consumed by His love for me, which I found to be far superior to any love I had ever known before.
As in marriage, that first love began to wain as all those shiny worldly things threatened to lure my heart away from my first love. The desire for human love and worldly success have tested my love for Him. I’m reminded of the words to the hymn “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”
O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above
And there have been times of severe testing that I have questioned His love and commitment to me. In fact, I have felt sorely let down by Him. I have to admit that I’m still working through disappointment over some of the trials and tribulations He has allowed. Years ago, during one particularly gruesome trial, I even questioned God's existence because it didn’t make sense that He would allow what was happening in my life, but He graciously put the rug back under my feet. (Of course, Jesus IS the rug.)
And in some ways, things have only gotten harder since that trial. Loss of home and temporary loss of health, betrayal by family and long-time Christian friends…. I’ve suffered the loss of loved ones—my mom, dad, and husband, and along with my husband's death, any earthy sense of security and stability in this life. My daughters and I were stalked by a fine Christian man. And yet, this same man and his wife had offered us a place to live when we needed one after my husband died. (I have seen the best of Jesus in the worst of men.)
These betrayals and losses have tested my faith and love for Him beyond the imaginable. But He has lovingly seen me through to the other side of each and every trial. And He has made sure that I love Him even more at the end of the day as I’ve seen Him protect and provide and love me through the hard times—time after time after time.
Even though the enemy has tried to destroy my love for Jesus, it has only grown and deepened. In over 40 years of knowing Him, I’ve learned that loving Him with all my heart is a matter of being with Him, conversing with Him like Adam did in the cool of the evening, listening to His voice and obeying what He tells me like Abraham did, submitting my will to His because I trust Him and desire to please Him, as Jesus Himself submitted to the Father.
Loving Him is sharing my heart with Him when I’m afraid and when I’m hurting and when I’m overjoyed…. And it’s hearing His heart for me as He speaks to me throughout the day and night.
So, for me, loving Him doesn’t consist of a list of do’s and don’t’s any more than loving a husband could amount to this (which would be law, not love). It’s so much deeper. It’s my life. There is no life apart from being loved by Him and loving Him in return.
I would have to say that loving Him and being loved by Him IS LIFE.
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